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Behind every garment we wear is a story that imbues our attitude with its unique history. These stories become increasingly rich and complex when you combine and re-tailor vintage pieces from a pastiche of legacy fashion houses. Such is the case with Lucas Meyer-Leclère’s new collection for LML Studio, presented at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin at Kraftwerk Mitte on September 7. A master of print design, hand painting techniques, and an overall maestro of the immersive sartorial experience, Leclère enlists a coterie of friends and contemporaries to walk the runway, personalize the garments, lend vocals, and to re-mix his chosen score. He sees himself as a stable boy in the fashion world, which isn’t so much a complaint as it is an omission of the potential for kink therein. Following the runway presentation for his most recent collection, we sat down with the emerging designer to discuss material, sustainability, our favorite Berlin-based style archetypes, and the importance of taking your time. Read more.
hat: Alice Daniela Kister
bra: Samsøe Samsøe @ haebmau.atelier
bustier: Yulia Kjellsson
belt: stylist’s own
pants: Samsøe Samsøe @ haebmau.atelier
tights: Falke
shoes: Maries Pieper
bag: Jacquemus
earrings: Yulia Kjellsson
knit top: Sonji
pants: Gia Söder
shoes: Sonji
coat: House of Base
t-shirt: Yulia Kjellsson
skirt: Maries Pieper
shoes: Sonji
jacket: Wood Wood @ referencestudios
top: Maries Pieper
belt: Christian Louboutin
skirt: Stella McCartney @ vestiaireco / referencestudios
tights: Anne Isabella
bag: MCM @ haebmau.atelier
earrings: Yulia Kjellsson
top: Cacharel vintage
dress: Melisa Minca
tracksuit: Daily Paper @ haebmau.atelier
bustier: stylist’s own
shoes: A.W.A.K.E @ vestiaireco / referencestudios
hood: Stylist’s own
Berlin Atonal presents Metabolic Rift: an (un)guided exhibition-tour through the entire Kraftwerk building from 25.09 – 30.10.2021. The exhibition operates as a sequenced series of site-specific interventions from leading international sound and visual artists, channeling an audience’s experience through organized time. Small groups enter previously unused spaces of the former powerplant to discover a choreographed succession of artistic assemblages. Borrowing the logic of a ‘ghost-train’, the principle is accumulation and the sequence of artwork-apparitions is set as if according to a musical score. The boundaries between things shift and reassemble. Seeing and hearing happens in a chain reaction, a circulation of kinetic energy. A full experience unfolds over approximately 2 hours. Tickets available now. Entries every 15 minutes. Click here to discover more.
For the majority of Berlin with even one slight finger on the city’s art or music pulse, The New Infinity program needs no introduction. And yet, it deserves a reintroduction after a well-deserved revamping.
My last association with New Infinity is of being stoned in a pop-up dome temporarily housed outside and in front of Kunstraum Bethanien, listening to Dasha Rush performing live some pulsing droney beats, with dark visuals projected above of intergalactic projections. Not a bad recollection, to say the least. This year, however, the line up is elevated and expanded and taken more seriously. This year, a little less doom-oriented. This year, more playful and varied. With a new location comes a new mood, and both the location and mood are totally awe-inspiring, with something for everyone.
The new New Infinity home is now blessed with the location of Prenzlauerberg’s beautiful Planetarium: a place of school field trips that never otherwise gets enough love or credit from the local crowd, due to its lack in programming. This weekend, Berlin is treated to the top floor of the Planetarium’s full dome theater, with many films and scores created site-specifically for the occasion.
The line up stretches out over the course of three days & nights, with both familiar faces and new additions to the roster, ranging from silent films of our planet’s skewed landscapes, to brutalist beats, post-apocalyptic renderings, and microcosmic explorations. To get you started, allow me to present a few highlights:
If the Museum of Natural History appeals to you…
Whitney was born in 1917. Let that sink in for a moment. Known as a pioneer of computer graphics, animation, and data visualization (namely how we can render what sound ‘looks’ like) the work ‘MN:P’ is an acknowledgement of where we started and how far we have come in the realm of digitized art. The piece itself was inspired by the Southwest American indigenous people, whom Whitney worked alongside with on a number of art projects, and the rudimentary colors are a delight to observe dancing, growing, and receding overhead. A previously unreleased short by Whitney entitled ‘Homage to Rameau’ from 1967 will also be screened on Friday and Sunday.
The composer Darren Cunningham (aka Actress) creates a sophisticated atmospheric score pushing along post-industrial visuals of free-floating machines and gears with no tether, from the experimental artist collective Actual Objects. Actress shies away from anything club-oriented with this piece, instead focusing on a delicate-yet-present piano. ASMR for the apocalypse. Saturday is the world premiere, and those in the know, know. One may consider themselves lucky for the experience.
In the future, we have progressed back to the primitive: human avatars wander about a world, engaging in their own actions and surroundings, only herding together when a new figure appears. Inspired by Elias Canetti’s crowd theory (from his 1960 book ‘Masse und Macht’), watching the dynamics unfold in this peculiar vantage point is hypnotic and alluring, like watching fish float about in an aquarium. The advanced VR template is made more appealing by a children’s book-like atmosphere, with drumming, humming and field recordings backing the imagery.
Bill Ham is familiar with the strange and beautiful. In the 1960s, he took his love for Abstract Expressionism painting (then in its hey-day) and began using light trails in lieu of paintbrushes, creating supersonic, dreamy, fully-immersive live installations of color and sound. Composer Kara-Lis Coverdale created a specific new score for the Light Paintings, and it is beautifully ethereal. Part heat map, part oil streaks in a puddle… The meditative auras of Ham and Coverdale are directly projected onto the viewer. A wonderful experience.
While no stranger to the New Infinity program, the musician Al Qadiri and artist collective Transforma grace us once more with their piece ‘Extraordinary Alien’ which is a play on the American artist visa classification: ‘artist with extraordinary ability.’ Aren’t we all? The planetarium’s geodome is absolutely the ideal venue for watching such galactic imagery, transposed upon repetitive, hypnotic beats of tension and release.
More information on The New Infinity, including line up and tickets, can be found here. Text by Janna Shaw
top / pants: Ffluenzaa
shoes: Dr Martens
jacket & bottoms: Jetpackhomme
top: Jordan Luca
The Emerald Tablet is modeled on Dorothy’s quest to The Emerald City in Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz” and invokes its iconography to ignite the dialogue between esotericism and popular culture. As a fervent Theosophist, a religious movement that flourished in Los Angeles at the turn of the century, Baum’s Emerald City is a reference to “The Emerald Tablet of Hermes,” an ancient text that formed the foundations of alchemy and all subsequent western occult traditions. On view until October 23 at Jeffrey Deitch. photographs by Oliver Kupper
photographs by Oliver Kupper
Jillian Mayer gets stuck in your head. I still find myself randomly humming the tune to her pop song, “Mega Mega Upload,” even though it’s been ten years since I first saw the video she made for it. Her short, catchy video “I am your Grandma” has a cult following on YouTube and TikTok and is so delightfully bizarre that it’s bound to be discovered by youngsters for decades to come. Her Slumpies, sculptural furniture designed to help people use their smartphones, are found in airports by travelers who don’t know her, only that her art helps them maintain comfort while staring into Instagram.
Her latest show, TIMESHARE, likewise wedges its way into your psyche. It leaves me feeling unsettled, yet inspired. It feels urgent but timeless as it examines the impending collapse of society while climate change throws our functional-enough world into chaos and turmoil. Her in-progress mobile bunker recalls the highbrow living spaces of Buckminster Fuller and Andrea Zittell, but also elicits the vibe of the RVs and trailer parks—the most economical but lowbrow living spaces of the American landscape. Read more.
As Serious as a Hiccup is the book version of artist and writer Nicole Della Costa’s journal; a journal in which she herself, as well as other friends and writers, jot and mark the musings of the day.
Nicole Della Costa, a Brazilian native currently living and working in New York City occupies a social milieu that intersects art, film, writing and music. An intimacy excavator, collaboration is at the heart of Della Costa’s practice, inviting fellow writers, friends and strangers to transcribe their poetry into her journal. Like the scanned fragments of writing on napkins and the pictorial ephemera included in the text, the collaborators’ own writing impacts Nicole’s experience, as her writing impacts theirs.
Through Della Costa’s eyes and uncensored way of looking, we experience the discovery inherent in moving to a new city, orienting yourself, and falling in love with the quotidian. Despite her now several years in New York and prevalence within its cultural scene, Della Costa’s ‘enthusiasmo’ remains and functions as an unpretentious guide throughout.
Zoe Chait
projection reflected, 2017-2020
Projections on aluminum panels
9:18
Capturing Sophie, the late, hyperkinetic pop sensation whose tragic and untimely death shocked and saddened millions around the globe, is like photographing the flight of a butterfly. The prodigious and pioneering musician and producer of avant garde electronic music began her career anonymously making cosmic waves with singles like “Bigg” (2013) and “Lemonade” (2014), worked closely with a number of artists from the notorious PC Music label, and in 2017 came out as a trans woman. Developing an intimate connection with Sophie at such an inflection point was the genesis of Zoe Chait’s Noise, a solo exhibition of portraits that capture an individual who has just emerged from the cocoon with a new and fleeting lease on life. Here and gone in a flash, two artists forge a bond under painfully short exposure. A loving elegy, besotted with adoration. Chait bears witness to the weight of the sublime and the value of the present moment. Read more.
Rakeem Cunningham
The Heros Are Tired, 2021
Edition of 3
Archival inkjet print
24 x 16 in (61 x 40.6 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Ochi Projects
Rakeem Cunningham
Water Breathing, 2021
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
Archival inkjet print
24 x 16 in (61 x 40.6 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Ochi Projects.
Rakeem Cunningham
Round Table, 2021
Edition of 3
Archival inkjet print
24 x 16 in (61 x 40.6 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Ochi Projects.
Rakeem Cunningham
Gunner, 2021
Edition of 3
Archival ink jet print
24 x 16 in (61 x 40.6 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Ochi Projects.
Rakeem Cunningham
Lancer, 2021
Edition of 3
Archival inkjet print
24 x 16 in (61 x 40.6 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Ochi Projects.
In his first solo exhibition with Ochi Projects, Rakeem Cunningham plays and poses alone in his studio, exploring a multitude of selves informed and surrounded by a multiverse of niche subcultures. Each portrait is a declaration of subjectivity and existence—proof of self-validation and an ongoing healing journey that expands upon an outdated definition of hero.
Triggered by the designation of essential workers as heroes while being treated as disposable this past year, Cunningham paused to reflect upon his relationship to this loaded word. As a queer youth of color, he idolized heroes that didn’t look like him. Lazy metaphors—green or purple villains dressed in evil black—reinforced false dichotomies and ultimately white supremacy.
Hero is on view through June 26 through August 7 @ Ochi Projects 3301 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90019
The London-based artist Jim Longden has released his debut short, To Erase a Cloud. Shot on 16mm film, the twenty-minute piece is “a sort of crash-course to the introductions of filmmaking.” To Erase a Cloud delves into the harsh realities of grief, as well as the uncomfortable realities of our social media-driven culture. The poet and actor Sonny Hall, a good friend of Longden, plays the painfully tormented, reckless and broken main protagonist, John Little.
The opening scene shows Little living a depressing existence in his dirty apartment; drinking dregs of empty beer cans and lighting half smoked fags as the early morning sun seeps in. We catch Little staring at his reflection in a cracked mirror; a symbol for his fractured state of mind and the result of his self-inflicted isolation spurred on from the loss of his mother. Read more.
Out in the arid, martian landscape of Pioneertown lies the Red Dog Saloon, an oasis brimming with live music and refreshing new libations. On July 10, guests braved the warm temperatures for an afternoon of activities and activations including Latinx With Plants, a nursery aimed at community and healing through plants, indigo dyed t-shirts from Jungmaven, Madre themed tattoos from The LA River Tattoo Co., tarot card readings from Quinn Castro, and herbal apothecary products from Grateful Desert. MADRE DESERT WATER offered guests the opportunity to make donations in support of The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, RAICES, who fight on the national frontlines for the right of all people to seek a safe and secure future for their families.
Live music from Steven Smithie graced Pioneertown at dusk. Late night DJ sets inside the Red Dog Saloon included Que.Madre from Chulita Vinyl Club and Reverberation Radio. photographs by Clifford Usher
It was five years ago when I first came to the fabled cathedral that is Berghain. The voyage of getting to the abandoned power depot-cum-dance Mecca from Warschauer Straße involved a journey, of course, as all worthy destinations must. First, back then, the ‘dancer’ is taken through an abandoned strip of supposed park, littered with broken glass, graffiti, and empty baggies. You will be approached by haggard creatures of Friedrichshain asking for tokens in the form of Pfand. You will be approached by many alchemists, offering you a variety of elixirs to accompany you on your trip. Do not take them.
By the time the behemoth structure appears in site, the final stretch (before the line and final boss, which many will find most daunting) is a large field of dirt. Depending on the season and the climate, that large field of dirt will be a large vat of mud. Depending on the shoes, some turn around. Dancer, tred lightly.
I have not retraced these steps in well over a year. In this timespan, the stretch of garden has regrown into a small urban farm, with mothers meeting for coffee, a group of green vests tending to bushes of herbs, no trash in site, all graffiti covered. People now feel comfortable letting their dogs explore the lush terrain off leash.
And that plot of mud? It has been blanketed with green grass. There are sidewalks. A man mowing. Staring up at Berghain, still draped with its ‘Morgen ist die Frage’ banner, I felt a sense of cognitive dissonance. Where am I?
When first settled upon in the 13th century, Berlin and its surrounding area was a swamp. Some of it still is, especially the further up north you go. There is speculation that the very name ‘Berlin’ comes from the Slavic word for swamp: ‘Berl’
An entire language and religion was created around Berlin’s murky ecosystem. Its first settlers came to make sense of its magical decay and regrowth through myth and legend, passed down for generations. Sorbian folklore speaks of pagan deities appearing as great trees, of three-headed snakes representing the tri-fold existence of life. Folk songs were created to guide those that understood the language through the more treacherous zones, which would ultimately lead to areas of beauty and respite, to clean water and vegetation. If you did not know the melody, you were a foreigner, not to be trusted. Maps were not drawn, they were sung.
The Halle of Berghain has been turned into the swampland it sits upon. Artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen has re-created that which existed, using a gaming platform as his canvas, displayed on a multitude of LED screens. Black reflective flooring gives those who enter a sense of topsy-turvy pseudo-reality pooling around them.
Steensen collaborated with the Natural History Museum of Berlin to make this endeavor a realistic experience, rather than a realm reinterpreted. The museum’s collection is one of the oldest in the world, and it includes more than 30 million objects and documentation originating from the Berlin area. For the exhibit, natural structures, such as mushrooms, minerals, and live life, were produced through Unreal Engine, a gaming software that allows high-def replications of objects. AI-assisted ray tracing, a technique which enables realistic lighting and reflection, is also used to make the shadows and glimmers of light all the more believable.
There are a multitude of screens to watch, allowing different ways to see your environment. An extended cinematic screen stretches from one side of the Halle to the other, for viewers to sit and gaze upon as a movie. Square screens dot the center of the room, showing molecular close-ups that appear as abstract artwork. Flanked upon the outer wall are more screens. Two windows have been opened (a rarity at Berghain), to allow for natural lighting and a sense of grounding.
The downstairs entry hall also includes screens, showing the depths of the underworld. As above, so below.
Sitting there, watching what was, what is, I fell into a meditative state. The Halle is soaked in speakers playing field recordings from swamps, as well as droning by the sound composer Matt McCorkle, and interspersed whispers and sounds by the musician Arca, whose first performance was in Berghain. The sounds morph from the primal—a frog bellowing—into the sophisticated—“a singing ritual of past sensibilities.”
As soon as one may question if the piece they are watching is simply hi-def close up video footage of mushrooms and molds and water and trees, a slight tinge of fantasy flicks across the screen: a snake morphs into a root; a firefly erupts into a flash; the wind in the rustling leaves is for a moment made visible. And at some point, the images begin to disintegrate into their molecular structures, with no filters placed upon them. DNA sequencing is stripped and shown bare, giving a glimpse at the tech-organic, no filter.
In a world where all has been taken, claimed, bent to our will, extorted, destroyed, capitalized upon, revamped, and arguably beautified, the Berl-Berl exhibit begs to question how in the future we will be able to experience the natural. It places importance on documentation. It reveals the dire need for us to honor from whence we came to better understand ourselves, and it shows the potential role of artists in the future.
As I left the exhibit, and walked past the front of the empty queue of Berghain, past the green field that once was mud, back through the park with basil and elderflower, with manicured paths and park patrols, two young girls approached me, asking where they could find Berghain, asking if it still existed.
In a way it did. In a way it didn’t. Mythologically speaking, it will exist forever. Instead of falling into derelict, the entirety of Berghain is currently composed of artists displaying their interpretation of the world around them. New methods of prayer, new approaches to figuring themselves out, questioning our placement. Its placement. A Cathedral repurposed once again, that has been many things for many people throughout the history of Berlin, which will continue to shift and creak, constrict and expand. Berghain, this time, a place of respite and exploration, resting solidly upon its swamp, allowing all to enter, if only you know how to find it.
Berl-Berl by Jakob Kudsk Steensen is commissioned by the Berlin-based art foundation Light Art Space (LAS). The exhibition is curated by Emma Enderby, of New York’s The Shed, with sound composition by Matt McCorkle, featuring music by Arca.
Berl-Berl is on view through September 26 @ Halle am Berghain, Am Wriezener Bahnhof 10243, Berlin
photograph by Timo Ohler
ANDREA CHUNG
'Im Hole 'Im Canher, 2007
15 x 22.5 in (38.1 x 57.15 cm)
Photo cut out
JULIANA PACIULLI
Really Sir, There Wasn't Any Noise, 2021
11.375 x 20.5 in (28.89 x 52.07 cm)
Acrylic, Marker and Gouache on Cyanotype
Installation view
KIM SCHOEN
SKU 0360 (1), SKU 0360 (2), SKU 0360 (3), 2013
12 x 8 in (30.48 x 20.32 cm) each
Light-jet print face-mounted to plexi
Installation view
I AM NOT THIS BODY. But I am. Aching and full of longing. Take a picture of this meat, this husk. You don't have me. I am something that cannot be photographed, cannot be named, defined, translated. There's experience and that's all there is .... But there's also all this stuff. It gets in the way. I've always had trouble with stuff. I've fought my whole life to have control over stuff, over the appearance of stuff: my chaotic hair, learning to play the accordion, getting dressed, being on time, electric bills, the five ballet positions, getting money, spending money, even just putting one foot in front of the other. Clear the table. A place for everything and everything in its place. A battle for order, a battle for space.
— Barbara Ess, excerpt from I Am Not This Body, Aperture, 2005
Co-curated by artists Juliana Paciulli and Evan Whale, I Am Not This Body reflects on the battle between the physical and indefinable; things that are at once us but aren’t. The bodies in the show have been collaged, painted, cast, printed, chemically altered, cut out, and dyed. Some cast shadows and some ripple in the wind. The works are rooted in reality, but they meander through beautiful, undulating reckonings with these realities. These figures emerge from their surroundings and reach into histories, presents, and futures revealing experiences that are exquisitely human.
TOMMY KHA
Stops (II), Marsha P. Johnson Park, Brooklyn, 2020
Framed: 42.5 x 32.75 in (102.87 x 83.185 cm)
Archival Pigment Print
Edition 1 of 5
JENNIFER SULLIVAN
Pink Courtney Versace Ad, 2021
38 x 28 in (96.52 x 71.12 cm)
Dye and thread on hand dyed cotton with painted wooden dowel
EVAN WHALE
The California Bather (The Smile), 2019
Framed: 38.13 x 25.13 in (96.85 x 63.83 cm)
Oil Pastel, Carving & Chemigram on C-Print (Artist Frame, UV Museum Acrylic)
![BARBARA ESS Electrocute [Border Series] , 2010 Framed: 12 x 15.31 in (30.48 x 38.89 cm Archival pigment print Edition 1 of 4](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/544cb720e4b0f3ba72ee8a78/1625791593642-WYN8TZWM85DHSP3IWQ5R/Barbara+Ess_Electrocute_2010_TPP.jpg)
BARBARA ESS
Electrocute [Border Series], 2010
Framed: 12 x 15.31 in (30.48 x 38.89 cm
Archival pigment print
Edition 1 of 4
DANIEL GORDON
Blue Face II, 2012
Framed: 24 x 19.5 in (60.96 x 49.53 cm)
Type C-Print with UV Lamination
Edition 1 of 3 + 1AP
JESSICA WIMBLEY
Synesthesia Portrait, 2020
18 x 12 in (45.72 x 30.48 cm)
Mixed media collage with hair
KIM SCHOEN
SKU 0296, 2013
12 x 8 in (30.48 x 20.32 cm)
Light jet print face-mounted to plexi
VANESSA CONTE
Reclaimed, 2018
72 x 54 in (182.88 x 137.16 cm)
Acrylic on canvas
YOUNG JOON KWAK
Lying Hermaphroditus, 2017
69 x 24 x 13 in (175.26 x 60.96 x 33.02 cm)
Fiberglass, resin, acrylic paint, clear acrylic spray
Exhibiting artists include: Andrea Chung, Vanessa Conte, Barbara Ess, Daniel Gordon, Tommy Kha, Young Joon Kwak, Juliana Paciulli, Kim Schoen, Evan Whale, and Jessica Wimbley. I Am Not This Body is on view through July 31 @ Tyler Park Presents 4043 West Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles
Sula Bermúdez-Silverman
Ladies in the Ring, 2021
Glass, isomalt sugar, himalayan salt, LED light
Dimensions variable. Each sculpture approximately 15 x 5 x 10 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Bambou Gili
Green Fairy Jr., 2021
Oil on linen
16 x 20 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Chris Oh
Spring, 2021
Acrylic on geode
6 1/4 x 4 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
![Claire Colette Blue Flower [never-ending flame] , 2021 Acrylic, ash, salt, rose water, resin incense (frankincense, myrrh, copal, benzoin, hyah), dried flowers, flower essences on canvas 46 x 56 inches Photo by Julian Calero Courtesy of Make Room L](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/544cb720e4b0f3ba72ee8a78/1625096525974-SO9DV6AIPVTJLKZ76ZA9/Claire+Colette.jpg)
Claire Colette
Blue Flower [never-ending flame], 2021
Acrylic, ash, salt, rose water, resin incense (frankincense, myrrh, copal, benzoin, hyah), dried flowers, flower essences on canvas
46 x 56 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Lita Albuquerque
Millennium Poem, 1995
Pigment, enamel, silkscreen on glass
14 x 11 x 4 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Yanyan Huang
Little Time Pool, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
24 x 20 inches
Photo by Julian Calero. Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Hiba Schahbaz
Untitled, 2021
Gouache, tea, watercolor on wasli
12 x 10 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Ruby Leyi Yang
Things You Wrote me 1, 2021
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Lior Modan
The Thread of the Smoke, 2019
Velvet, nitrile, epoxy putty in cast rubber artist frame
18 x 22 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Make Room Los Angeles
Guimi You
Blue Studio, 2021
Oil on linen
42 x 48 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Andrew Sendor
@kh.oi : when there's parking in venice, 2021
Graphite on paper, matte white Plexi in white powder coated aluminum frame
14 x 11 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Miguel Angel Payano Jr.
Old Mirror Sunset, 2021
Wallpaper, wrapping paper, mirrored plastic, faux gold foil, faux peach, silicon, faux wood, plastic twigs, faux leaves, aluminum bottle caps, plastic pupils, aluminum wire, hardware, various glues, acrylic varnish, acrylic on panel
23 x 19 x 4 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Desire Encapsulated features a slate of more than fifteen artists working between painting, sculpture and installation to expand on the theme of desire—how it is perceived across different psychological spaces and artistic practices, and how it is "encapsulated" through different artistic practices across time, medium and space. The exhibition presents a group of artists' work that considers desire as part of the fundamental human experience, a shared experience and the driven power of humanity.
The artists participating include Andrew Sendor, Catalina Ouyang, Guimi You, Lior Modan, Bambou Gili, Miguel Angel Payano Jr., Joeun Kim Aatchim, Lita Albuquerque, Yuri Yuan, Sula Bermudez-Silverman, Yanyan Huang, Yifan Jiang, Yesiyu Zhao, Ruby Leyi Yang, Chris Oh, Hiba Schahbaz, and Claire Colette.
Joeun Kim Aatchim
The Piggy Back, 2019
mineral pigment on silk, custom walnut frame
11 1/2 x 17 1/2 x 2 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Yesiyu Zhao
Pedicure and Pistol Squad, 2021
acrylic, flashe and tempera on canvas
24 x 48 inches
Photo by Julian Calero
Courtesy of Make Room Los Angeles
Desire Encapsulated is on view through July 31 @ Make Room Gallery 5119 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles
"The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with."
― Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985)
“Gillean”, 1980, acrylic on board, mounted on panel, 23 1/4” x 23 inches
Gillean McLeod in the loft on Spring Street that she lived in with her band Party Boys. The band played in downtown lofts and bars such as Jacarandas and Brave Dog. They built the stage at Al’s Bar and were one of the first bands to play at what became a gathering spot for the downtown art and music scene.
When the British-born artist Nick Taggart came to Los Angeles in 1977, he planned to stay for three months. Four-plus decades later, he is still here, living on the same Glassell Park street he was told about at a Stranglers show in London. Then twenty-five, Taggart, who studied illustration at Cambridge University, found LA’s legendary light, eclectic architecture, and frontier landscape irresistible—and the antithesis of gray, recession-bound London. He quickly connected with the vibrant underground art and music scenes centered in downtown LA and Hollywood, at clubs like Al’s Bar and the Masque, which gave rise to iconic punk and new wave bands like X, The Go-Go’s, Devo, and Missing Persons, as well as lesser-known groups like Party Boys and Fender Buddies, who became his friends.
All the while, Taggart sketched his new city in his notebook, depicting the color-soaked mystique of the Santa Monica Pier, Hollywood’s Stardust Motel, Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock, and the dynamic characters in his social and creative orbit. But it wasn’t until he switched from colored pencils to acrylic paints that Taggart finally found a way to capture the city’s light. “Once I started using acrylics I felt like I could get that intensity within the shadows,'' Taggart says today. “Even in the shadows there’s like a blue glow; even the dark has light.”
“Brooke”
Limited-edition archival prints published by ODD ARK LA and Nick Taggart. 9 different portraits, 12 x 9 inches, Ed.10
“Grace”
Limited-edition archival prints published by ODD ARK LA and Nick Taggart. 9 different portraits, 12 x 9 inches, Ed.10
“Phyllis”
Limited-edition archival prints published by ODD ARK LA and Nick Taggart. 9 different portraits, 12 x 9 inches, Ed.10
“Rain”
Limited-edition archival prints published by ODD ARK LA and Nick Taggart. 9 different portraits, 12 x 9 inches, Ed.10
“Veil”
Limited-edition archival prints published by ODD ARK LA and Nick Taggart. 9 different portraits, 12 x 9 inches, Ed.10
In 1980, Taggart painted a series of portraits of friends in their native environments. They included the stylist and musician Gillian McLeod, pictured in her Spring Street loft with her lavender Gibson guitar; the photographer Jules Bates, who is shown leaning against his restored Nash Metropolitan, defiantly holding up his left hand to reveal two missing fingertips he’d lost in an explosion; and punk fans Sandy and Rochelle, whose gumball-palette fashions coordinate with the graffiti’d wall of a venue in Little Tokyo.
“Jules”, 1980, Acrylic on board, mounted on panel, 20.5 x 28.5 inches
Jules Bates with one of the Nash Metropolitans that he had carefully restored. Jules made iconic photographs of bands such as Devo, The Go Gos and The Weirdos. He often photographed his subjects within sets that he painted himself that became three dimensional paintings. He worked on many record covers with Artrouble, the design collective he formed with make-up artist Phyllis Cohen and graphic designer David Allen.
“Diana”, 1980 acrylic on board, mounted on panel, 23 x 24 inches
Diana Perez was the singer in the band Fender Buddies and had a day job at Tiffany’s on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. I painted her in the cactus garden on the other side of Santa Monica Boulevard from the upscale jewelry store because I liked the visual contrast between the untamed vegetation and the sleekly designed shops nearby.
“Fender Buddies”, 1980, 20 3⁄4 x 20.5 inches, watercolour and gouache on board, mounted on panel, framed
Fender Buddies in front of a religious artifacts store in downtown LA. I met the band originally when they played in a warehouse with Party Boys. They also played at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions with Suburban Lawns and were included on the “Rodney on the ROQ” album that had a photograph by Jules Bates on the cover.
“Rochelle and Sandy”, 1980, acrylic on board, mounted on panel, 20.75 x 30.5 inches
I met Sandy and Rochelle when X played at Self-Help Graphics in Boyle Heights. I painted them in front of the wall of Brave Dog, a post-punk club that was next to The Atomic Cafe in Little Tokyo. They reminded me of people in the crowd when I saw The Ramones play in London for the first time at The Roundhouse in 1976.
In another painting, the purple pointy shoes on a pair of legs standing over a topless blonde woman, who is lying poolside in a clear plastic raincoat, belong to the fashion designer Gregory Poe, the older brother of gallerist Jeff, of Blum & Poe, and designer of said raincoat. That work caught the eye of Jann Wenner, who tried to commission something similar for Rolling Stone, but Taggart was traveling, and already on to the next thing—which at the time included book and record covers and T-shirt and poster designs for the pop culture emporium Heaven, a counterpart to Fiorucci. The paintings went into flat files, where they remained, unseen for 40 years, until Taggart started sharing some of his archives on Instagram during the pandemic.
Dani and Yvonne Bas Tull, who run the gallery ODD ARK • LA and are fellow Northeast LA artists, began to take notice of Taggart’s Instagram posts—the work from the 1980s, in particular. “It got to a point where it was kind of exciting to see what he would post next,” recalls Dani Tull, a born-and-bred Angeleno whose mother had an art studio on Skid Row during that same time. Recognizing a little-known slice of LA art history and a vital link between the renegade spirit of the underground and the global art market of today, they approached Taggart—now an art professor whose work skews toward meticulous organic abstractions—about a show.
LA Stories: Paintings and Drawings from 1980, featuring six paintings and nine oil pastel portraits of models and cultural figures like Brooke Shields and Grace Jones (available as limited-edition prints, along with a limited-edition t-shirt featuring a Heaven design), is a technicolor time capsule. The high-gloss surfaces and saturated hues, angular compositions and cuts of clothing, sculpted coifs and bold slashes of blush and lipstick, all point to the digital age on the horizon, yet are masterfully rendered, in fact, by hand. Seen up close, minute details are revealed within the brushstrokes. For Taggart, who framed the paintings for the exhibition, seeing them in a new context after forty years has been revelatory. “It's sort of more interesting to see them now,” he notes, adding that perhaps he was simply “waiting for the right moment” to show them.
In Tull’s opinion, the screen-friendly nature of the work makes it that much more rewarding to see it in a brick-and-mortar space. He views presenting the paintings IRL, as it were, as an opportunity “for people to ponder the history of the LA art community. And in that pondering we have an opportunity to think about where we’re at, and where we’re going...Aside from that, the paintings are really fucking cool.”
LA Stories: Paintings and Drawings from 1980 is on view for the first time by appointment only through August 1 @ ODD ARK • LA. text by Steffie Nelson
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